The Southwest Texas Sacred Harp Singing Convention is an annual gathering of shape note singers. Songs are sung a cappella from the Sacred Harp tune book. The Convention was organized on April 28, 1900 at the Round Top School House, in Caldwell County, Texas, as the South Union Singing Convention. It is the second oldest continuous Sacred Harp convention in Texas. Several older conventions are no longer extant.
During its history, the Southwest Texas Musical Convention has been held in at least a dozen Texas counties. Originally an annual two or three day convention, the delegates later changed to meet on each fifth weekend of the year. The Convention presently meets on Saturday and Sunday of Fifth Sunday weekends in the spring and fall. The spring session is held at Bethel Primitive Baptist Church, at McMahan, Texas. The fall session is held in Austin, Texas. The current "textbook" of the Convention is The B. F. White Sacred Harp (2006 Edition), first revised by W. M. Cooper and others in 1902.
Famous quotes containing the words texas, sacred, harp, singing and/or convention:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“Every Morne from hence,
A brisk Cherub something sips,
Whose sacred influence
Adds sweetnes to his sweetest lips,
Then to his Musick, and his song
Tastes of his breakefast all day long.”
—Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649)
“The harp that once through Tara’s halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls As if that soul were fled.”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)